Talking Barbie was a great gimmick. A little computer chip made the classic doll able to talk and so they had her talk about her friends, maybe even about school. But then the folks at Mattel made a big mistake. They

created a talking Barbie that perpetuated a stereotype, one that ran deep with a lot of people.

Nocross is tough.

Hey, it's tough.

It's Kevin Beach, and this is a special archived episode of Akembo.

Math class might be hard, but math, math isn't what we think it is. One reason that

math class feels hard is because math isn't what they teach in math class. It may be that you

think you are no good at math, but you are probably mistaken. You might mean that you are no good at arithmetic,

because arithmetic is boring and you know how to do arithmetic

with a computer.

It might be that you're not good at memorizing formulas that make no sense

to you. And that's probably a good idea because of all the things to be good at, memorizing formulas that make no sense to you is not

one of them.

School was built to create people who could do well on tests, and so, quote math, unquote, educators, also in quotes,

decided that the easiest way to have people do well on the tests was to teach them arithmetic and have them memorize equations

that they didn't understand. But this is not a podcast about math class. It's a podcast about math. It's a podcast about math because you're good at math. All of us are good

at math. We do math every day. If you are the NBA champion for the season you are doing

extraordinarily complex math without even realizing it because of course the

force of gravity is exerted against the ball and you have to

toss the ball at the right velocity in the right direction so that gravity

counteracts the energy and force you put into the ball

so that the ball goes in an arc and lands in exactly the right place and goes to

...